Paxton's Roll of Honor

Historical project recounts residents' military service

BY PATRICIA ROY SPECIAL TO THE LANDMARK

Historian Ed Duane has compiled a roster of Paxton's military veterans. Robea Patrowicz photo PAXTON - More than 60 years have passed since Ed Duane served in the military, but the memory of dates and places from his World War II tour come readily to the nonagenarian.

"I was a staff sergeant in the Infantry, part of the 29th recon troop. We were stationed in England and made the landing the day after D-Day," he recalled.

Duane's unit moved on to the city of Brest then went on to Germany winding up in the town of Bremerhaven.

"I spent a total of three years overseas," he said.

Duane talks about his service with the precision of a historian, an avocation he pursues with dedication and curiosity. He has more than a decade's service on the Historical Commission and in that time has undertaken studies on various town subjects: the common, Center Cemetery, and the question of who owned the bell in First Church steeple - the church or the town.

Duane has just wrapped up his latest project - a compilation of the military service records of the men (no women yet) who enlisted in the armed service from the town of Paxton.

Of course, as with all ventures that dip into a not-so-neatly-detailed past, Duane had to make some accommodations.

"For some time, Paxton was part of either Leicester or Rutland. You have to look at what area someone came from to see if he was from present day Paxton," Duane explained.

The roll of veterans stretches back to the Revolutionary War when what is now designated as a town had only 800 residents.

"There were 35 Minutemen from this from a population that size. These were all farmers who worked seven days a week and still they enlisted," Duane marveled.

Revolutionary War service was sporadic, Duane said, and it was common for a man to enlist for a while, then go home to tend his farm, only to re-enlist when he was able.

These service gaps were typical of the challenges that Duane faced while assembling his research.

"I did most of my research at the Leicester library. There were volumes there that I just had to go through and pull out any reference to military service," he said.

The lists of "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolution" were a font of source material for the Revolutionary War while later service records came from national offices or the Attorney General of Massachusetts.

An organized government source is a relief for any historian. In researching the project, Duane dealt with diverse original source materials - from beautifully limned documents detailing oral testimony of service to crabbed manuscripts that were almost impossible to decipher.

"Sometimes I had a hard time reading some of the very early works. I wanted to be as accurate as possible, so all the documentation is here. Years from now anyone can see where all the information came from," Duane said.

By the time of the Civil War, records were centrally located, taking some of the detective work out of Duane's research. Later war records are easily legible, and yet in foreign wars some facts such as place of burial are not so readily available.

"It was a long, tedious job. I did want to personalize it, so somebody reading it in the future wouldn't feel as though they were talking to a stranger," he said.

It's the details in Duane's project that make it heartbreaking - especially in the section called "Honor Roll," illuminating the service of those who, in Duane's words, "made the supreme sacrifice."

Duane points it out himself in the names of the men who formed the town's muster for the Civil War, more young men dying of disease than wounds, becoming casualties before they became heroes. Or the briefs relating the local deaths in World War II, men who lost their lives in theaters of operation that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, far from their small hometown.

It took Duane two months to compile the records of the 92 Paxton veterans who served their country, a period that's just a short span of time to him, but with a ripe payoff.

"History has always been my goal. I enjoy projects like this and self-satisfaction is one of the benefits," he said.

Duane's research is volunteered, but his work ethic is strong. He is a stickler for accuracy, a veteran grave officer appointed by selectmen in the '50s and '60s to note and mark the graves of veterans at the town's cemeteries.

He has been an active participant in the Memorial Day ceremonies celebrated by the town and the students at Paxton Elementary School. Duane's research has melded into the PCS curriculum.

His veterans' research led the students to the memorials on the Common and gave them a leading role in dedicating a memorial stone for veterans just a few years ago.

"I told them, 'You are the only nonmilitary group I ever knew of that dedicated a veterans' memorial. You can be proud of yourselves,'" Duane said, relishing the memory and the notes he received from the children after the event.

Those are the people who Duane thought about while he gathered the Paxton service records - the generations that would only know these soldiers as part of history.

"I had to make sure that the information was correct. I didn't want it to backfire," he said. "That's where the stuff pays off."